February (1)

First of all, congratulations on your successful Kickstarter Mix CD campaign. It’s the very first Mix CD funded solely by fans. Could you tell us why you decided to go for a Kickstarter campaign?

I just wanted to do something different to be honest. I’d done almost 30 mix compilations through traditional channels with the likes of Global Underground & Renaissance and doing another one of those felt a bit “same old, same old”. Taking the Kickstarter option was a out of my comfort zone, a bit of a risk and sometimes you have to do that just to feel alive. I also firmly believe that this is going to become an increasingly popular way in which artists and their audiences make things happen. By cutting out the middle and opening up a direct line of communication between fans and artists, can lead to all sorts of interesting possibilities. 

After this success, do you think many campaigns will follow?

I don’t see why not. We learnt a lot on our first campaign. And there are definitely things we would do differently next time and other ideas that have since developed. I certainly hope it won’t be my last foray into crowd funding. 

You’ve said the Mix CD is in a niche market again. Why do you think this is?

Because those days so many more people are downloading their music digitally and as a result physical formats have suffered greatly. But there is still a market for CDs & vinyl. I for one, and I know i’m not alone, still like to buy physical stuff. I’m a collector. I have a library at home with all my vinyl, CDs, DVDs & books. It’s my favourite room. I don’t get that kind of relationship from my hard drive! From disposable files on a computer. And I think that there will always be people who will agree with me. Cloud computing maybe the ultimate in convenience but it’s very soulless. 

Some people would think a Mix CD is just as easily put together as a DJ set. Could you show us some insight in the process of creating a Mix Compilation? What are the main things you have to deal with?

Maybe for some people it is just like recording a DJ set but for me, I spend weeks and weeks crafting these albums. I want them to be extra special, to stand the test of time and I utilise all the tools available to me to make an album that just wouldn’t be possible to do as a live set. With software programmes like Ableton you can layer upon layer tracks so that they all almost become remixed in the process. For me it’s not just about segueing from one track to the next, it’s about creating a collage of audio that is coherent as one single piece. Also, when you’re doing a live set you don’t have to worry about the licensing process which is another major factor you have to throw into the mix.  

You’re the founder of the Audio Therapy label and helped found Stress Records. Recently you decided to start up a new label – together with Steve Parry – called Selador Recordings. What do you want to accomplish with Selador?

To put out great music. Plain and simple. I love the process. I didn’t realise how much I’d missed it after closing Audio Therapy a couple of years ago but am so glad to be back in the game. And Steve is the perfect partner. We’ve know each other for such a long time and I think our tastes complement each other. His enthusiasm is infectious too. Which always helps

How do you select new artists for the label?

There’s no hard or fast rules. We’re always on the look out. The first release on the label from Samu.l came about as he is a friend of my cousin and I heard it as demo over a year ago. The Paul Rutherford ‘Get Real’ release was something that Steve had always wanted to put out as it’s one of his favourite tracks ever. 

You’ve been the editor at Mixmag from 1988 till 1991 if I’m not mistaken. When was the point in life you decided to leave the music journalism business and focus on a different music career instead? Were you already a DJ before starting at DMC/Mixmag?

Yeah it was just a choice that i had to make as I couldn’t keep doing everything. At least not to the standard I want to do things anyway. If you spread yourself too thinly then something has to give and my DJing and Production careers were starting to take off so it was the journalism that I had to leave behind. I decided I’d much rather be a bird than an ornathologist!

Got any other big things we should keep our eyes on?

I’ve got quite a lot of productions on the horizon. First up is my new collaboration with John Fleming, the follow up to last years Pixelated, which is called Unexpected Item In The Packing Area. That’s coming out on Pro B Tech with remixes from Hernan Cattaneo & Martin Garcia plus one from Dubspeeka too. Then there’s a new thing I did with Guy Mantzur called ‘Feline’ that’s being released through Mihalis Safras’ Playmobil label with a remix from Mihalis himself. After those look out for collaborations with One Million Toys and Funkagenda which will be both out before the end of the year. I’ve also got a couple of remixes to do soon too. I’ve been busy pretty studio wise this year. 

Are you a coffee drinker? How do you drink it?

Medium Latte with two sweeteners please

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Here’s my recent interview for electronic music blog, The Ransom Note on all things Kickstarter, why I wanted to do things differently this time and my thoughts on the state of music journalism 25 years on from my days at Mixmag.. http://www.theransomnote.co.uk/dave-seaman-talks/  

There is much moaning about the demise of tangible products in this business, but hardly anyone seems to do anything positive about it; and even fewer people are brave enough to make the point that the past wasn’t all that great anyway; so it was nice to hear Dave Seaman buck the trend of apathy and negativity when I met with him the other day.

If you don’t already know, Dave whacked his head clean on the chopping block when he decided that his next mix CD would be funded by the public via Kickstarter.  He had a month to raise £25,000 and he bloody well went and pulled it off with a few days to spare, no less.  And what’s more, at the time of writing, he’s more than £7,000 over his funding target.

The Kickstarter campaign offered various different products/experiences, ranging from a signed copy of the CD (£12 or more) right through to a personal DJ lesson (£300 or more), and then the top banana; a Dave Seaman DJ set in your own home (there were 5 takers at £2,000 or more).  

It was actually an offer from his old muckers at Renaissance that made him think he should push the button and do something different: “If I remember rightly, I’ve done 27 mix albums before, and I’ve done about a dozen for Renaissance,” he said.  “Nothing against Renaissance at all, but I guess there might have been a bit of ambivalence, so people would be saying ‘oh, Dave Seaman’s doing yet another Renaissance album‘”

“It was Sara’s idea [his agent at Two Point Zero Agency]… she’d been following Kickstarter and had backed a few projects, and originally we were going to do it later in the year, but I thought ‘you know what, let’s do it now, before someone else does it’.  And I know people have used it to do albums before, like Radiohead and all sorts of people have done pledge music stuff, but no one’s done it for a mix album.”

Bit of a surprise, that, considering that Radiohead’s foray into the world of fan-pledging was back in 2007; but on the other hand it may merely show the surprising resilience of the mix CD market.

“There’s still a big market for CDs with older people.  The numbers I did for the last Global Underground and Renaissance CDs were good… obviously not as good as how it was in the 90s, but still good.  Obviously younger people are doing digital downloads and I’ve done that as well, but there’s still a market.“

“But I put a lot of effort into these… I don’t just throw them together in an afternoon… I take weeks and weeks crafting them… I wanted people to take a bit of notice of it.  I also firmly believe that this could be the start of the way a lot of things might go.  There will be a lot of people with one eye on what we’re doing thinking ‘if this is working, then how many more projects might work?’

The case in point came as we were sitting at the bar of the Malmaison in Farringdon, shooting the shit about musical business models and Dave’s beloved Leeds United.  By pure coincidence, Yousef wondered in (he was doing a Circus at The Egg that night), and the first thing he said after the pleasantries was “fucking good idea that Kickstarter thing mate”.

And he’d be right – just look at the evidence.

“The way the business model works with mix CDs where they take a cut of your touring meant that I was making a loss.  This used to work as a business model; 5, 10 years ago when there was more meat on the bone and more promoters around the world were willing to pay a premium to be associated with mix CDs, but it’s different now.“

“I understand what they’re trying to do to a certain extent because they’re trying to do this whole 360 deal thing that a lot of the big record companies do, so that’s why we all did it because we thought ‘well ok; if they’re spending the money doing the album, they take a cut of the touring’; but if the touring cut is going to come straight out of my own fees, it doesn’t work any more.“

But obviously the exposure down the years was of great benefit?

“Absolutely, yes , but it’s diminishing returns now.”

There’s no doubting the positive impact that the likes of Renaissance and Global Underground have had with their mix CDs, both for the careers of DJs and for the public’s ability to connect with them; but it it is the latter point that a Kickstarter campaign can take to another level, a level simply not possible with the linear transaction of paying a set price to receive a set product.

“One of the great things about it is being able to do all this stuff that you couldn’t do at HMV, like DJing at someone’s private party… and it’s fun.  I’ve got a friend who got 30 mates together who paid 64 quid each… they’re doing a party in his back garden.  It’s generated a lot of excitement, a lot of press, and that’s what I want around a release.“

“Effectively it’s just pre-ordering an album with a few extra fun bits thrown in.”

It seems like such a good idea now – now that he’s raised the money – but it must have been nerve-racking at times.

“It was a bit scary at the beginning, when you fear that you’re gonna be three weeks in and you’ve only got a couple of grand together and you’d look really really stupid.  It was scary but exciting… it becomes addictive, checking it every few minutes.“

And potentially, there could be an even more interactive angle, where the public could have a say in the musical content, for example.

“A few people have suggested this, but then it’s not mine any more.  I’d basically be a jukebox, but there’s no reason why someone else couldn’t do it and loads of people could get together and do something creative.“

“Artwork might be more viable.  People love to be involved in something… you can really feel it.”

Although there was no direct input from the public on content, with such a different platform to work from, it’s interesting to see whether it made a difference to how he approached the musical side of things.

“Every mix album I do is of that moment I suppose… I’m playing a lot more Housey at the moment… I’m trying to keep the Progressive thing at arm’s length because I’ve been rightly or wrongly tagged with that for a hell of a long time.  For a long time I thought ‘oh well, I just do what I do’, but when it starts to have a negative effect it makes you think a bit.  It’s strange because when I see other DJs, they’ll play a lot of the same records as me, but when they play them it’s Techno and when I play them it’s Prog!“

Although he’s not overly bitter about it – he seems to have a pretty balanced view of it all.  As the former editor of Mixmag, I teed him up for the opportunity to lament the reduced influence of the print press; that ‘proper journalism’; that gatekeeper of the truth that we like to romanticise about (yes, even those of us that write for websites); but despite a few leading questions, the balance remained.

“I think back to what it was like when I was a kid, and I used to devour Record Mirror on a Thursday for James Hamilton’s column.  That was pretty much all the access I had to the information I wanted – one magazine, once a week, one page.  If you compare that to the information that people have now, it’s mind boggling.“

“And of course, magazines and newspapers are disposable items, apart from Vogue or Vanity Fair or something.  Most magazines are not collectable.“

Good point.  It’s very rare that a magazine can create the profound sense of ownership that, say, a vinyl could, but there are exceptions.  Faith would be a good example – it’s probable that many Faith readers would still have a healthy pile of them, I say.  And Boys Own.

“I did used to love Boys Own. Terry was always an opinionated sod and used to make me laugh.  I don’t think there is enough of that around these days.  The Herb Garden and Jockey Slut used to be great too.“

But broadly, you’re saying that the public are better served now than they were in the days when the print media was stronger?

“I don’t know about everyone being better served… you’ve certainly got to be more organised.  The choice is there for you – you’ve got to make your decisions of where you want to get your feeds from, but you’re not so reliant on the decisions from a few people – there’s a lot more choice.  So I guess compared to what I had as a teenager, then yeah, definitely better.“

“Yes, I think it’s important for there to be filters like Resident Advisor, Ransom Note, Data Transmission etc… places that people trust; but of course with Twitter now you can just take the RSS feeds from wherever you like… there’s your information… why would you really need to go and buy a magazine?  I think the internet will hit the print media harder than it hit the record industry.“

He might well turn out to be right, but there’s no denying the weight that the ye olde print media still carries, even in the face of years – or in the case of the British nationals – decades of falling circulations.  The habit of people looking up to their authority remains – even Paxman on Newsnight still shows deference to the first edition of the morning papers.  And then of course there’s the paradox of a medium like Twitter, which is lauded the world over for its potential to create democracy, but is actually elevating the status of writers that have come from the old guard that Twitter is supposed to be challenging.

“It’s interesting how many journalists from newspapers and magazines have huge Twitter followings now…. they’re almost becoming little stars in their own right… the likes of Caitlin Moran, Grace Dent, Alexis Petridis,” Dave says.  “Alexis was a Mixmag writer, but now he’s a big cultural commentator.“

“And they’re very good at commentating, because that’s the nature of what they do; commenting on things on a regular basis, and that’s the kind of thing that I’m interested in on Twitter.“

But where will the equivalent commentators of tomorrow come from, if the internet sees to it that there is no NME/Mixmag/Guardian to get them into the public eye in the first place?  It’s a debate for another time.

“My general rule is, people who say it isn’t as good as it used to be, probably aren’t as good as they used to be.”

A fine soundbite on which to end.  I’ll remember that one.